Two choices for Main Canon DC: Legacy-Only or Constant Reboot?]!

[daBronzeBomma]

Poll forthcoming.

It's pretty clear that, from a continuity standpoint, half-assing it does not work for the DCU as a whole. Yet, ever since COIE concluded in 1986, that's exactly what DC keeps doing with retcons that dramatically affect some franchises and leave others completely unchanged.

So, presuming there will come yet another Crisis event that will muck things up again down the road ... what kind of continuity for the Main Canon DCU would you prefer out of these 2 choices?

A. Legacy - Only continuity: Everything happens in real - time, everyone ages in real time, death is permanent, EVERYONE eventually gets permanently replaced by successors including Clark, Bruce, and Diana, and then their own successors get replaced themselves.

B. Constant Company-wide Hard Reboot continuity: every 10-15 years IRL, everyone starts over from Day One, no matter how well they were selling right before the previous Crisis. Still real - time progression, but no one gets replaced in - continuity. The Single Identity Franchises remain the same anchor character (Clark, Bruce, Diana, Arthur, etc) in each reboot, but the Multiple Identity Franchises can have a new anchor character (Flash, Green Lantern, Hawks, Blue Beetle, etc) in each reboot.

That's it. Those are the two extreme choices. No more half -assing.

Either this is the very last reboot and everyone is getting replaced sooner or later

or

this is the first in a perpetual planned cycle of company -wide decade-long reboots.

Pick your poison.

[Sacred Knight]

If I could only pick between the two (and why not assume such for the sake of the poll), I'd pick B. Main reason is despite neither idea being optimal, the first option means I eventually lose Kal-El as Superman, Diana as WW, etc. And those aren't legacy characters. I would reject them being replaced and lose all interest.

[SiegePerilous02]

None of these appeal to me. Reboots never work unless they are planned well and they go all in (which DC has never been able to do). And proves too divisive in the long run. I think rebooting every couple decades could be good, it would allow versions of characters to go through permanent changes and they could always come back in the new continuity, where they don't necessarily have to go through the same arcs. It would allow things to be mixed up in every self contained continuity without needing them to be beholden to each other. But the way they generally do it now? Hard pass.

Legacy for me has only worked a few times: it's the main thing that is appealing about the JSA, and I like Wally and Damian as the Flash and Robin respectively. That's pretty much it though. Superman and Wonder Woman are not legacy characters and I have precisely zero interest in ever seeing it happen. Those characters are more than just names and costumes that can be passed down to anybody. Letting their stories end and having them retire or killing them off would be one thing, but let the DCU move on without a Superman II and Wonder Woman II. Saw it the first time, don't need a sequel thanks.

[Elmo]

honestly man no offense but threads like this make me sick to my stomach

there's no way you can say those are the only choices for the future of DC. you have no idea what they are planning or how the company works. threads like this are annoying because it just feeds the completely false narrative that DC has no idea what to do or where to go and wants to reboot again where all the same crap gets repeated over and over until someone makes another thread about it. just give it a rest

[The_Sneezing_Stormtrooper]

For my personally I'd choose legacy characters. I'm already a fan of many of the ones in place and it has been a major factor in many of my favourite runs over the years. It would also be nice to see a progression and natural evolution to the DC universe. So my vote went for what I'd want rather than what I think would be best.

Having said that, DC comics is more than just about the core comics. A majority of their business and new customers come from people who are familiar with the most popular and well known versions of the characters, which is why you mostly see legacy characters take over when a character is considered "stale". They are expected to both draw in customers and use their medium to promote merchandise and multimedia. It's easier for them to do both with a version of each character that is most in line with pop culture. It's important to remember that many attempts of legacy replacement have failed (though DC has a better track record with it than Marvel) and doing so line wide would be a huge risk at a point where the industry is already on shaky ground. I don't think it's as much about lazily retreading old ground as much as keeping themselves and their contemporaries employed.

Would a complete reboot be a solution to that? I don't know. You'd have a ton of fans leave. I know I might loose interest if this happened, as I personally did during the majority of new 52. Could you be assured that you'd bring in enough new readers when a majority would probably be more interested in a fresh movie or TV universe anyway? I don't have DC's sales data and I doubt I could answer that even if I did. How long did it take for the Ultimate universe at Marvel to become just as convoluted and build up a substantial catalog of back reading?

I get why they find the best solution is to just trim the fat off the universe every now and then. It's messy and it's usually unclear for what counts and what doesn't but it also allows them to have their cake and eat it too. I have my own head-canon for what counts and what doesn't in the Rebirth canon and that's probably what they ultimately want. This approach allows them to still sell old trades without discounting them, gives the creators a wider variety of characters to work on and a chance to cherry pick the bits of continuity they want to include. It's certainly not a perfect solution but I get why they see it as the lesser of all evils in this case.

The truth is that there is probably no clear cut answer.

[Dr. Ellingham]

A. Legacy - Only continuity

B. Constant Company-wide Hard Reboot continuity

Pick your poison.

Half-assing it, sort of. But really, it's none of the above.

Longtime comic shop goers care about continuity, crossovers, retcons, legacy characters, reboots, etc.

WB cares about profit.

Once the direct market goes away - meaning longtime comic fans are no longer driving the business - these elements that drove interest in the 1990s-2000s will no longer matter. All the Crises, legacies, multiple characters in the same role, etc.

[Buried Alien]

Reboot, but the window needs to be expanded to 25-30 years. Ten or even fifteen years isn't as long a time as it seems: Jason Todd has been back as the Red Hood for fifteen years. Barry Allen has been back for a decade. Damian Wayne has been Robin for a decade. All of it feels like just yesterday.

Buried Alien (The Fastest Post Alive!)

[Aahz]

With 12 issues per year, which is roughly equal to 2 story arcs, a real time progression is for most characters way to fast imo.

[Digifiend]

Yeah, every comic would need to be weekly for that to work! Should be at least one in-universe year to four real years, which is how Marvel's sliding timescale averages out as. Justice League was formed 15 years ago in-universe? That would be 60 years ago in real life - which is 1958. It was actually in 1960, so that works out about right.

[Ascended]

Well, in a choice between lesser evils, I had to go with legacy-only.

I'd miss Clark, but I hate reboots with the passion of a thousand burning suns. Seriously, if my hate of reboots could be turned into a super power, I'd be ruling the earth by next week.

So I'll take legacy-only. There's still eighty years of back issues I can pick up.

[Sirzechs]

Keep half assing it, its the best outcome.

[Superfly Frankenstein]

I wish there was the Legacy option but in sliding comic years. Who says Damien can’t be in his teens for the next 15 years, or Batman hangs it up in 2039 at the age of 62 in comic time? We can have our cake and eat it too. Death doesn’t have to be permanent to have legacies. Yes, there should be a flow, that’s storytelling. Look at the pre-Craig Bond movies. It was the same guy who barely aged but still had a continuous flow. Just swap the Cold War threats with post-cold war threats. So what if Tony Stark made his armor in a different locale because we weren’t at war with Vietnam ten years ago? I thought it was pretty neat that in the latest Avengers book Captain America said he was frozen for the first forty Superbowls.
Have legacy. Have the all-incompassing sliding time line. It’s all good and it works. A reboot, however, throws the baby out with the bath water.

[Jabare]

I've got no faith after DC went back n the New 52 and just doesn't know what it wants anymore

[superduperman]

There's a third option here that probably wouldn't be very appealing but it might be the only one the Big Two have in the long run: Go the Archies route. Do stand along stories with very limited continuity. This can be made to work with a reboot but it doesn't necessarily have to. Superman can be married with a kid but as long nobody ever ages and we don't reference past stories, this works. It means you don't get to do year long arcs that change continuity forever and you can't reference something that happened in an issue two or three years ago but it avoids the problem of constant reboots. Each story can be something like three issues. But the days of stretching something out for years on end are over. Long term continuity just plain doesn't work. You can't compact 50+ years of stories into a decade without problems. We're long past the 1990s where you had never ending continuity stretching over multiple titles.

[Buried Alien]

There's a third option here that probably wouldn't be very appealing but it might be the only one the Big Two have in the long run: Go the Archies route. Do stand along stories with very limited continuity. This can be made to work with a reboot but it doesn't necessarily have to. Superman can be married with a kid but as long nobody ever ages and we don't reference past stories, this works. It means you don't get to do year long arcs that change continuity forever and you can't reference something that happened in an issue two or three years ago but it avoids the problem of constant reboots. Each story can be something like three issues. But the days of stretching something out for years on end are over. Long term continuity just plain doesn't work. You can't compact 50+ years of stories into a decade without problems. We're long past the 1990s where you had never ending continuity stretching over multiple titles.

Essentially, it would be a return to a Golden and Silver Age concept of continuity.

Buried Alien (The Fastest Post Alive!)